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Plot Summary
The the main setting of the novel is Orlando, Florida. The novel starts out in a subdivision called Jefferson park. The protagonist and narrator, Quentin Jacobsen, and his neighbor Margo Roth Spiegleman, both nine years old, go to the park and discover the corpse of Robert Joyner a divorced man who had committed suicide. The novel flashes forward to Quentin and Margo as high schoolers who have grown apart. One night Margo shows up at Quentin’s bedroom window wearing all black and a has black face paint all over her face. She convinces him to sneak out and help her get revenge on people she feels have hurt her. “Tonight, darling, we are going to right a lot of wrongs. And we are going to wrong some rights.” (30 Green). The first characters they visit are Margo’s ex boyfriend Jase and the girl he was cheating on Margo with, Becca. Margo has Quentin called Becca’s father and inform him that Becca is having sex with Jase in the basement of their home. Then Quentin and Margo break into their home graffiti a blue ‘M’ on their wall and leave a fish for Becca. The second person they visit is a character mentioned only once throughout the story. They leave her a bouquet of flowers. She is the character that informed Margo that her boyfriend was cheating on her. After that they go to Jase’s house, break in and leave him a fish and a blue ‘M’. They then visit a character named Lacey, who becomes a more prominent character in the last half of the book. Margo felt that Lacey had never been a good friend to her. She felt that Lacy ridiculed her to often and that her backhand comments about Margo were truly meant as insults. They leave a fish for her in her car and graffiti a blue ‘M’ on the roof of her car. At “three-fifteen in the morning” (55 Green) they enter the Suntrust bank building and they just relax on one of the higher floors for a short while. This is the first time Margo calls their town a “paper town” (57 Green). She describes the town and “fake” and that it’s “not even hard enough to be made of plastic” (57 Green). Once they leave the Suntrust building Margo asks Q who he would like to get revenge on. He decides to take revenge on the high school bully Chuck Parson. Margo and Q sneak into his house remove one of Chuck’s eyebrows with Veet, and slather Vaseline on all of the door handles in his house. After getting revenge on Chuck Margo tells Q her plan to break in to Seaworld. Together they break into Seaworld and leave disappointed because none of the animals were in their showcases.

Margo and Q get back to their homes close to the time they are supposed to be getting up in the morning to go to school. The next day at school all Q thinks about is how things have changed. He wonders if Margo will start hanging out with him and his friends and sitting with them at lunch, but Margo doesn’t show up to school that day. After Margo had been missing for three days he parents filed a report. Margo had runaway five times in the past so her parents were more frustrated than worried. After learning that Margo has run away he notices a poster taped to the back of her shades. The poster leads them to a book of poems. One specific poem has highlighted sections that Q believes to be clues left by Margo for him to find that will lead him to where she is. A line in the poem makes Q believe she left him a note of some sort in her door. So Q, Radar, and Ben sneak into Margo’s room and unhinge her door looking for clues. They do not find one so Q goes back to thinking. He realizes she must have left him a note in his door. So he unhinges his door and finds and address scrawled on a small piece of paper. Q hopes that that is where Margo is hiding. The next day Q, Radar, and Ben skip school and go to the place on the piece of paper. They find an old abandoned mini mall. They also find evidence that Margo may have taken up residence in the abandoned buildings at some point.

Eventually the clues lead Q to believe that Margo may be hiding out in one of the many abandoned subdivision projects around Orlando; what Q’s mother likes to call psuedodivisions. He drives around to all the psudodivisions that he feels are possibilities only to find that Margo has not run away to any of these suspected areas. The day of graduation Q receives a minivan from his parents as a graduation present. While getting ready for graduation which involved wearing nothing under his gown (a pact him Radar, and Ben made earlier in the story) he makes a connection that leads him to discover that Margo has been hiding in a fictional town in New York called Agloe. Q, Radar, Ben, and Lacy all opt to skip graduation to drive up New York to search for her. Toward the end of the drive they have a car crash. The car is badly damaged but not leaking any fluid and all four passengers sustained only minor injuries so they decide to keep driving to New York. They make the drive from Orlando, Florida to Agloe, New York just shy of twenty-four hours. They find Margo living in an old dilapidated barn. But instead of being grateful for them finding her she reacts negatively. Angry that Margo is not grateful for all their efforts to find her, Radar, Ben, and Lacy leave and spend the night at a hotel. Q stays behind and talks things over with Margo. She decides to stay in New York. He wants to stay with her but Q goes back home with his friends in the end.

Character Descriptions
Quentin “Q” Jacobsen- The protagonist and narrator of the story. Has had a crush on his neighbor Margo Since they were kids. Throughout the story he follows clues he thinks Margo, who has gone missing, left behind for him to help him find her.

Margo Roth Spieglman- Margo is Quentin's neighbor who he has a crush on. Margo and Quentin go to the same high school but do not hang out together. She plans out adventures in a little black book and thinks that planning out planning adventures is the fun part.Margo is missing throughout most of the novel.

Marcus “Radar” Lincoln- One of Q’s best friends. In the novel he is constantly editing pages on a website called Omnictionary (which is very similar to Wikipedia). He was nicknamed by Quentin and Ben after the character from M*A*S*H. His parents own the second largest collection of black santas. He is in the school band. He helps Quentin find Margo.

Ben Starling- He is also one of Quentin's best friends. He is in the school band also and also helps Quentin find Margo.

Lacey Pemberton - She has been Margo's friend since Kindergarten (Even though Margo feels Lacey has been judgmental of her throughout the course of their friendship). In the second half of the novel Lacy becomes involved in the search for Margo and Ben's girlfriend. She goes with Q to find Margo.

Jason "Jase" Worthington- He is captain of the baseball team and Margo's ex boyfriend. Quentin and Jason were not friends. In the last half of the novel Jason befriends Ben after a party in which both Ben and Quentin become popular in the eyes of the school.

Style
The novel is written in parts. Each individual part is named for something mentioned numerous times throughout that section. For Example, Part One:The Strings, Part Two:The Grass, Part Three:The Vessel. Each individual chapter within these sections are labeled with a number. Additionally the third part of the novel is divided into smaller sections by the hour. For example Hour One, Hour Two, Hour Three, etc.

Background
Throughout the novel John Green alludes to his previous “award-winning Looking for Alaska(2006): a lovely eccentric girl; a mystery that begs to be solved by clever, quirky teens;”

Also throughout the novel paper towns are mentioned numerous times. John Green's first experience with paper towns occurred in his junior year of college while on a road trip. Him and his travel companion came across a paper town in South Dakota called Holen. According to Green the story of Agloe presented in the novel is mostly true. “Agloe began as a paper town created to protect against copyright infringement. But then people with these old Esso maps kept looking for it, and so someone built a store, making Agloe real.”

Publication History
“Paper Towns, Green’s third novel, was published Oct. 16 by Dutton Books”

Reception
The novel Paper Towns received mostly good reviews. Blogger Rohan Salmond commented “I was impressed and wanted more of [Green’s] witticisms and spirited characters.” Robert Corwin of Arizona State University also reviewed Green’s novel and criticized that “some readers may find the authors use of language and sexual content objectionable.” Chelsey G.H. Philpot, editorial assistant of The Horn Book Guide, commented that “the end breaks your heart, and yet it feels right.” Michael Cart wrote that “Green ponders the interconnectedness of imagination and perception, of mirrors and windows, of illusion and reality.” Rollie Welch called Paper Towns “Green’s best work.”